The article Practice Cause-and-Effect Thinking for Better Reading Comprehension, talks about how children will have better reading comprehension skill if they learn about cause and effect. The article states “Critical thinking skills are based on prior knowledge and experience.” The article says that a child should know that a cause is “why” something happened and the effect is “what” happened.

The article talks about easy ways to teach cause and effect on a day to day basis.

For example: If you throw a ball, the dog will most likely chase it.

If you water the plants then they will grow.

As a future teacher, I really like the idea of teaching children cause and effect at such a young age. Last year I was observing a second grade classroom, and while they were reading a story the teacher would stop and they would predict what would happen based on the “cause” of the story. They students would guess the effect or what would happen next.

The study done at West Chester University, used middle school students. Students were given the same reading material, in two different ways, one was in traditional print and the other was an ebook. The study resulted in, the comprehension level was higher when the students read from traditional print.

This study presented at the American Educational Research Association in Philadelphia. The study showed that the reason the students were not comprehending as much was because there are games and activities that go along with the eBooks. Most would think that this would help the students understand the material better, but it in fact takes away from the material.

This information makes me think. Should we be teaching children the most effective ways to read on a ebook? or should we be trying to have them use the traditional print textbooks for as long as possible. In my opinion we should just start teaching what is going to be the future, and eBooks are the future. What do you think?